Holding The Line Guide Service

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Month: July 2014

Today a bit of corporate entertainment was in order. Some of the Texas-based sales force of the very popular (and delicious!) Blue Bell ice cream company came to central Texas for a sales meeting. While golf has been the traditional recreational outlet on “Day 2” of the gathering, those who do not golf were able to choose between fishing and jet skiing. Of the group of ~thirty-two, 7 chose fishing. I teamed up with another local guide to accommodate these folks in two boats. My boat fished white bass on Stillhouse, and the other fished for hybrid striper on Belton.

Joining me on Stillhouse were Charles Weiss (38 years with the company), Don Scoggins (32 years with the company), Ron Dickson (30 years with the company), and Bryan Sansone (5 years with the company). Seeing such longevity with one company says a lot about both the people and the company. Indeed, all of these fellows were very courteous, personable men that you at once felt at ease with. They enjoyed each others’ company, and were a pleasure to have on board — no crude language or behavior as is the case with some “corporate groups” — it was just like fishing with family.

The fishing was just okay today. We had a good start right at (obscured) sunrise, and then about a 30 minute run of activity as the sun finally shone enough to make you squint without sunglasses on (between 9:00 and 9:30 or so), but, the remainder of the trip was tough under very grey, murky conditions. The high pressure and very consistent fishing we’d enjoyed through the day before fell off immediately as the pressure began to fall, skies clouded, humidity increased, and the winds began to shift in advance of a cold front due in hours after the close of the trip.

We primarily downrigged for sparse, suspended fish down around 24-26 feet in deeper waters using 3-armed umbrella rigs equipped with Pet Spoons. On three occasions we stopped and used slabs fished vertically for more heavily schooled fish, but even then we did not see the kind of results I’d seen over the past several days under more stable weather conditions.

When I checked in with the crew fishing Belton, they also found the fishing very tough right up until their last stop of about 4-5 stops, and caught the majority of their 15 fish in the last hour.

It was quite distinctive how the light conditions directly impacted fish behavior. During the brief 30 minutes of thinner cloud cover when it got bright enough to require sunglasses and you could feel the sun’s heat through the clouds, things immediately improved. We saw largemouth bass actively pursuing bait on the surface, bait fleeing from predator fish, terns flying and dipping after small fish, and we saw our catch rate go up both on the downriggers and while using slabs. No sooner did things cloud back over than all of this died just as suddenly and stayed slow right through the end of our trip.

Personally being a fan of Blue Bell ice cream (the Cantaloupe and Cream flavor is my favorite), it was neat to get some insiders’ perspectives on the company and learn of their growth outside of Texas, with production facilities in both Oklahoma and Alabama, in addition to a third facility (apart from where the tours are given) in Brenham, TX.

We landed a total of 24 fish today, including 1 largemouth bass, 1 channel catfish, and 22 white bass. Big fish honors went to Bryan Sansone with a nice 2.75 pound channel cat taken near bottom as he fished a bladebait during one of our two stops to fish for more tightly schooled fish holding near bottom.

A special thanks to Landon Hengst, the Blue Bell manager who coordinated this effort, both for putting the trip together and for realizing not everyone likes golf!!

This morning I fished Stillhouse with Mr. Robert Williamson and his daughter, Bobbie. Bobbie and her sisters, Mary and April, chipped in for a fishing gift certificate for their dad for Fathers’ Day this year, and today was the day to redeem it.

Robert and Bobbie enjoyed non-stop action from start to finish today catching white bass on downriggers, slabs, and bladebaits.

There are some days when I show up at lakeside and go through my preparation routine and just know it is going to be a good day, and today was one of those days. The wind was light and southerly, we had a bit of cloud cover, the fishing has been very consistent for 2 weeks straight on Stillhouse, and the smell of fish was in the air, telling me shad were in abundance.

The good fishing couldn’t have happened for two nicer folks. Robert and Bobbie have been out with me 3 times now and, despite her being in Alabama for the last 4 years for college, they’ve managed to fish together whenever time allowed on holidays, summer breaks, and the like. Robert is a high school history teacher for the Killeen Independent School District, and Bobbie is now graduated with her BS degree in Nursing, with her NCLEX-RN exams forthcoming to gain her Registered Nurse status. She hopes to work with children here in central Texas.

Less than 20 minutes from pushing back from the ramp we brought in our first 3 fish — a double for Bobbie and a single for Robert. From that point on, we never stopped catching them. We moved to 4 different areas today, not because the fishing slowed down, just in hopes of a bit of variety. Downrigging is definitely the go-to technique right now, and it will produce the entire time the fishes’ feeding window is open, however, when I can find white bass near bottom, I like to sprinkle in some vertical jigging using TNT180 slabs and some bladebait fishing using Cicadas.

On the downrigging, a pair of 3–arm umbrella rigs equipped with Pet Spoons selected to match the small shad the white bass were feeding on did the trick. On the vertical jigging, a 3/4 oz. white slab worked well for us, and an all-sliver slab worked equally well when I experimented with it. As for the bladebaits, the 1/2 oz. Cicada in white and blue was my choice today.

Along the way today we got to talk about some of the highlights of the pair’s other adventures, including a White River, AR, rainbow and brown trout fishing trip, and a Destin, FL, amberjack and bonito fishing trip.

Our highlights for this trip included Bobbie’s one-and-only triple of the trip — where she landed 3 fish at the same time on her 3 arm umbrella rig. We also had a “big one that got away” story. As we fished our third area of the day, we got into heavily schooled white bass and were consistently catching them on slabs. A large fish (most likely a largemouth) grabbed Bobbie’s slab and pulled her rod tip straight down into the water. She was kind of startled, as the fish we’d been catching just don’t behave like that, and she though she was snagged, so she didn’t react like she knew she should have. Oh well — that’s what keeps you coming back again!

We landed a total of 62 fish today, 100% of which were white bass. We caught fish in the 1, 2, 3, and 4 year class.

This morning I fished Stillhouse with Steve Niemeier, his daughter Sarah, and Sarah’s two children, Caleb and Macy. This was Steve’s 14th trip with me since he first began fishing with me in 2011

L to R: Sarah, Caleb, Macy, and Steve with a few of the 69 fish we landed today on Stillhouse.
I was a little concerned because the winds had shifted to the north and east overnight. This little bit of weather also brought in some heavy grey cloud cover to the east. That obscured the sunrise and got our morning bite off to a slower, later start than normal. But, once the fish turned on, they stayed turned on for the entire remainder of our for our trip, with the best action taking place in the last hour as the sun brightened.

We alternated between two techniques morning. We downrigged to find fish, and then we smoked with slabs to try to exploit what we had found. In the long run, the downrigging was more consistent and more productive. For whatever reason, whenever we found large concentrations of fish schooled heavily near bottom, they either were not really interested, or they moved quickly away from where we had located them.

As we downrigged, we used a three arm umbrella rig on one rod and a tandem rig on the other rod. With five baits in the water, we regularly landed doubles. On several occasions we landed double doubles, meaning we caught two fish at a time on both rods. Saving the best for last, within a few minutes of the end of our trip, Caleb boated a triple, landing a white bass on each of the three lures of the three arm umbrella rig.

Four hours is a long time for elementary aged kids to stay focused on any one thing, but Macy and Caleb did pretty darn good. They stayed up late last night going swimming, and got a little frazzled towards the end of the trip, but hung in there like real troopers for a majority of our time on the water.

I always enjoy when firsts happen aboard my boat, and today Sarah experienced a first. She actually held a fish that she caught for the first time in her life.

We landed a total of 69 fish today, 100% of which were white bass. We caught fish in the 1, 2, 3, and 4 year class. The catch was anchored by Caleb’s 14 3/8 inch lunker.

This morning I fished Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir with Jon Ashby of Abilene, TX, and his 8-year-old grandson, Christian, of Colorado City, TX. The two “road tripped” in last night, found a nice local hotel with a pool to relax in, grabbed a burger at the marina where we were to meet this morning, and were up bright and early to come out and catch some fish.

Jon Ashby and his grandson, Christian, brought in a boat-load of white bass today on both downriggers and slabs.

Jon is a professor at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, home of “The Cowboys” where he teaches on the subject of audiology, among other things. He also owns his own audiology practice there.

Fortunately, Stillhouse continued to produce very well under the current stable weather conditions we are enjoying. We caught fish from less than 10 minutes into the trip and kept catching fish right up until minutes before putting the boat back on the trailer.

As we got going this morning we encountered a loosely schooled congregation of white bass in the same vicinity that multiple, massive schools of small shad were found in. We used one 3-armed umbrella rig and a tandem rig to present 5 baits at one time right at the depth the white bass were using. Pass after pass yielded anywhere from 1 to 4 fish per pass for the first 2.5 hours of our trip.

Just as that school begin to disperse and lose interest, we spotted some surface activity that led us to even more white bass action. This time the fish were in the lower third of the water column and tightly schooled enough to allow for a vertical jigging approach to be used. We broke out the spinning gear with 3/4 oz. TNT180 slabs and went to work. The fish bit aggressively for the first hour, then continued to bite, albeit with less enthusiasm in the final 45 minutes or so of our trip.

Since Christian has a small body of water near his home, I was sure to show him how to use a pole and line to catch sunfish from the shore by doing a little “sunfish demo” near the boat ramp as we wrapped up our trip.

By 10:30 the fish action was waning and the sweat was starting to pour, so, we called it a great morning and turned our thoughts toward lunch and air conditioning. We boated 51 white bass and 1 sunfish.

This morning I fished Belton Lake with father-in-law/son-in-law team Robert Woods and Warren Mellin, both originally from Maryland, and now living in Copperas Cove, TX.

Warren played his hand right even though he was new at using circle hooks with live bait. When the rod when down, he eased the rod out of the holder and just started reeling nice and easy, allowing the circle hook to find a place to catch. The result was this nice deep-water largemouth.

Robert and Warren’s primary fishing experience was on the Chesapeake Bay complex pursuing striped bass (locally called “rockfish”) mainly via trolling in saltwater. When Warren got orders to go from Germany to Ft. Hood following a tour to Afghanistan in between, life got busy with family, a new baby, military requirements to make rank, and more, so fishing has taken a back set. When their baby came along, Robert made the move to Texas to be near her and is now re-established in Texas, but has also found limited time to fish. The two had limited success pursuing catfish in the Lampasas River near Lampasas, TX.

Today, all the conditions seemed right — a new moon, stable weather, winds with a southerly component and at a manageable speed, but the fishing was really off. We stayed at it for a full 6+ hours (on a 4 hour trip) putting together the catch of 11 fish that we ended up with. In the low-light period just before and to 90 minutes after sunrise, we found abundant schools of white bass in ~30 feet of water, but, despite both downrigging very accurately through them and vertically jigging right amongst them, came up with precious little. We also hung some bait to try to up the ante a bit, but even that did not produce well.

I spoke to fishing buddy Tony B. who was out today until around 11:30a. His results downrigging and jigging were also very soft. I also spoke to a number of outgoing anglers at the boat ramp, and their results were poor, also. We only spotted a single school of topwater feeding fish appearing for just seconds all morning. Other anglers I spoke with reported no topwater. From the looks of the fishing boats zigzagging every which way in the first 2 hours of the day, it appeared no one was finding fish and that everyone was in search mode.

I’m fishing all evenings this week as my mornings have been dedicated to assisting at our church’s Vacation Bible School. This evening I had the pleasure of fishing one-on-one with Kenyon Sims.

Kenyon had never stepped aboard a boat nor caught a fish before our trip together this evening. He made up for lost time, catching 46 fish tonight!

I first met Kenyon through his grandmother, Rosemary Jenkins, while my wife and I were manning a booth at an end-of-school-year expo hosted by one of our local elementary schools. The school invited those who offered kid-focused summer programs to advertise at the event, and Kenyon’s grandma signed him up for a fishing trip on the spot. Today I also met his mom, Courtney Jenkins, as she dropped him off at the boat ramp.

We started off in search of white bass, hoping to find schools that were suspended which we could downrig for, or schools that were bottom-oriented that we could vertical jig for.

We found suspended white bass willing to bite in 3 distinct areas this evening, but, only at sunset did we find any holding tightly to the bottom in a situation where working a slab would be effective. We therefore downrigged for the entire trip save the last 20 minutes or so. We were rigged up with a tandem rig and a 3-arm umbrella rig, each equipped with Pet Spoons

Kenyon was like a sponge absorbing all the new input coming his way, and was able to duplicate what I showed him right away, which enabled him to be very successful. At one area we fished, the action got hot and we boated fish #14, 15, 16, and 17 in rapid succession. Feeling pretty confident at this point in his ability to rig the line and to fight the fish, Kenyon exclaimed, “I’m on a roll now!”. I just affirmed that and we kept the teamwork going.

In the last 20 minutes of the trip, we found some congregated, bottom-hugging white bass positioned on a ledge and used 3/4 oz. white TNT180 slabs to provoke these fish into biting. We landed our last 3 fish of the night using this tactic and then headed on in to meet mom on time.

For our efforts tonight we landed 46 fish including 43 white bass, 1 channel catfish, 1 largemouth bass, and 1 freshwater drum. I enjoyed fishing with Kenyon — he’s a very articulate, personable and respectful young man, now with a new interest in the outdoors (and 2 jealous siblings who, I suspect, may be coming out before long!).

I received a call from Rod Seaver this morning. He was looking for a Six Flags alternative and decided to give me a try. I described to him what I anticipated the fishery would do this evening and he was interested. Long story short, he booked a trip on short notice, brought his 12 year old son, Owen, out, accompanied by Owen’s buddy, 12 year old Landon Mulcahy. The whole gang is from Lampasas, TX.

Largemouth ruled the top…

And white bass reigned on bottom.

Before we set out in search of fish, I made sure all of the spinning rods I have dedicated to the “smoking” technique used with slabs had the handle on the correct side for everyone, and we then rehearsed what to do if we encountered a big school of white bass, as I had a feeling we’d run into some big schools of white bass as we downrigged this evening, based on what I saw on sonar during last night’s trip with some other youngsters.

Well, that worked out perfectly because, as I was barreling our way to where I thought the fish would be located tonight, something caught my eye. I saw a tern dive over open water. I watched the area where it dove and saw splashes coming up off the fairly calm surface. Those splashes were being made by largemouth bass pursuing shad at the surface. I pulled a hard turn and headed toward the action, just idling into the area as I got closer to where I’d mentally marked the activity. As I did, the screen absolutely light up with hundreds of white bass schooled together tightly, suspended over open water and feeding on shad.

We put the “smoking” lesson we’d just practiced to immediate use and landed fish non-stop for 2 hours, putting 84 fish in the boat before things began to ease off. The boys were working the slabs non-stop, and Rod was splitting his time between catching white bass down low and largemouth on the surface.

After the strong bite ended at around 6:30pm, we then spent the remainder of our time downrigging in pursuit of a 100 fish day. It took us about another 1.25 hours to meet this goal, but we did it and then some, putting exactly 102 fish in the boat for our efforts tonight including 6 largemouth bass, 2 freshwater drum, and 94 white bass, mostly in the 2-year old class, going right at 12.5 inches.

The following 3 phrases came out of the mouths of these 12 year olds: “Dad, this is way better than Six Flags!”, “I’d rather watch this downrigger rod than watch TV.”, and “I’d rather do this than play X-Box.” Those are truly compliments in this day and age!!

Rod, who is recovering from rotator cuff surgery, was about done as we hit the 100 fish mark, so, at that point he called an early end to our adventure and got the boys’ mouths watering by promising to hit a chicken joint on the way home.

With my mornings all this week dedicated to my church’s Vacation Bible School, all of my fishing is in the evenings this week. This evening I took out two elementary-aged kids, Baylie Savage of Midland, TX, and Ryan Nicholson of Killeen, TX. Mr. Al Nicholson, Ryan’s dad, accompanied us.

Baylie caught the first fish of her life tonight on Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir.

Ryan and his dad, Al, with one of the many white bass we caught on downriggers tonight.

We were fortunate to essentially drive from the boat ramp directly to a large, suspended school of white bass feeding on shad in 24-31 feet of water over a deeper bottom. We rigged up two downriggers, one with a tandem rig and the other with a 3-arm umbrella rig, and caught white bass until the novelty wore off, all on Pet Spoons.

We then went up into shallow hydrilla beds and put some icing on the cake with some sunfish caught on poles equipped with slipfloats using maggots for bait.

As the sunfish bite died as we approached sunset, we took one last shot at suspended whites, hooking 2 and landing 1 in the closing minutes of the trip.

Baylie had never caught a fish before in her life, but put that to rest in a big way. As we downrigged through a large school of white bass using the umbrella rig, white bass took 2 of the 3 lures and Baylie was successful in bringing them both over the side, catching not just her first fish, but her first and second fish, both at the same time.

Ryan, at age 7, is already an old salt. On his first trip with me he landed the (still-standing) Junior Angler lake record crappie. He, too, did very well this evening, catching half of the 24 fish we landed.

This morning I conducted the 14th SKIFF trip of the 2014 season by welcoming aboard 10-year-old Kyla Harding and her mom, Liz. SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trips are provided free of charge to families whose children are separated from a parent due to that parent’s military service thanks to the Austin Fly Fishers and a network of supportive individuals from all over the U.S. All it takes is a phone call from a parent to me at 254-368-7411 to reserve a date.

Kyla and her mom, Liz, enjoyed a cool, peaceful July morning of fishing while dad and husband, SGT David Harding, serves in the U.S. Army away from home in Maryland.

A pretty girl with a pretty fish!

Kyla is the daughter of U.S. Army Sergeant David Harding, and his wife, Liz Harding. Kyla is now nearly 11 years old and, as a result of his military service which has included combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan and unaccompanied tours to South Korea, SGT Harding has only been living under the same roof for 4 of those 11 years. Over the past 2 years he’s only been able to see his family for a total of 3 weeks, thanks to an unaccompanied tour to Korea, followed by an assignment to a post in Maryland.

Kyla is a pleasant, inquisitive, energetic young lady and very willing to give new things a try. She handled and released the fish we caught with no fear whatsoever (after naming most of them, of course).

We were actually expecting a second girl to join us today and for that reason hung around in the boat ramp area for a few minutes beyond our 6:30am start time. While we were waiting, I moved us to some nearby hydrilla beds and Kyla effortlessly put 19 sunfish (greens and bluegills) in the boat with a slip-float rig using a Gulp! bait on a small hook to attract these fish.

When it was apparent our other angler was not going to show, we headed on out to open water in pursuit of the mighty white bass. After looking over a few patches of bottom, sonar revealed what we were hoping to find — schools of white bass suspended down around 29-31 feet over deeper water — just right for a downrigging approach. Kyla took care of letting our lines the right distance behind the boat using the Abu Garcia 5500LC line counter reels recently provided to SKIFF by the folks at Pure Fishing in support of the SKIFF program. The line counter gives a numeric display of the number of feet of line going off the reel, so, I’d just call out a number and Kyla would get the job done. Once the lines were the right distance behind the boat, I clipped the lines into the downrigger and Kyla would then press the “DOWN” button on the downriggers to get the baits to the right depth. We’d then watch sonar for schools of fish, and, when they showed up, would turn our eyes on the rods to see if we’d get a strike. Kyla quickly got the hang of what our quarry looked like on sonar, and called them “herds” instead of “schools”, but, we all knew what she meant.

We picked up 8 white bass in this way, including 2 sets of doubles before the novelty wore off, after which Kyla requested we do some more sunfishing, which we did.

In our last 30 minutes I suggested we cap the trip off with a bit more white bass fishing, and Kyla was once again game for that. We boated 4 more white bass at what was going to be our final stop.

On our way in, a gentleman fishing with what appeared to be his two grandkids flagged us down. I idled over and he was kind enough to let us know he’d located a nice school of white bass and, seeing I had a child on board, invited us to join in the fun. This allowed me to introduce Kyla to the technique of vertical jigging with a slab spoon. We caught a final 3 white bass in short order here before the fish dispersed. We thanked the man for his courtesy and headed on in.

This evening I fished with a crew of 5 on Belton Lake. Joining me were Tony Bagliore, Darrell Pierce (the husband of Tony’s office manager), Darrell’s two step-sons, Tarren and Taylan McMahon, and Darrell’s nephew, Daniel Pierce. Tony and his wife are from near Jarrell, TX, Darrell and his family are from Georgetown, TX, and Daniel is in for a visit from Waxahachie, TX.

L to R: Tarren, Darrell, Taylan, and Daniel with some white bass we downrigged for right at sunset this evening.

Tarren (with fish) and First Mate Tony Bagliore.

Tony and his wife are new houseboat owners out on Lake Belton and enjoy entertaining employees and clients from their Bagliore Concrete business. Tony is a life-long fisherman who got started in the salt off of Long Island, NY. He’s just recently begun using downriggers and tonight served as mate instead of angler, helping me keep the downriggers managed.

Long story short, our trip ended like I thought it would, which was not like I’d wished it would have. Fishing on Belton has been tough for about a week now since the strong topwater bite ended just in advance of the full moon. Add to that an evening trip (which, statistically, only gives up fewer fish then mornings), and a north wind, and experience told me we’d have to work for every fish we caught. Well, work we did, and we had a few fish to show for our efforts by the time all was said and done.

The staple of the trip was downrigging for suspended fish. We hit three areas, each showing fish but giving up none, before we landed our first fish at Area 1413. We picked up a fish fish here as we combed over the area multiple times until finally there was nothing to comb out.

We made a move and gave live bait a try between Areas 1405 and 1401, picking up just one short hybrid here. Again, we had numbers of fish approach our baits but, just as with the downrigging, couldn’t get them to pull the trigger and strike our offerings.

We returned to downrigging, picking up a few fish near Area 084 before returning to Area 1413. Once there, I saw feeding white bass spread through the water column, so, I very quick got the i-Pilot deployed so we could hover over these fish in the light N. breeze that was blowing. We picked up 3 more fish by aggressively working slabs through these fish, but, that action didn’t last long.

We closed things out by downrigging for the last 45 minutes of the trip in an area triangulated by Areas 084, 1271, and 496. We added a few more white bass and short hybrid to our tally until dark fell and the fishing was over.